The Book of Horses and Unicorns

By Jackie French

From Australia's Children's Laureate comes a delightful collection of stories about horses and unicorns.

Take a journey through the ages and around the world - from ancient Greece, to the time of Genghis Khan to Arthurian England and then to outback Australia in the 1950s.

Each story weaves the fantastic into the commonplace or focuses on the special relationship that exists between humans and horses. Some stories are based on true stories, some on fantasy, all are brimming with heart-warming magic and adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Dec 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781460704424

Jackie French

Jackie French AM is an award-winning writer, wombat negotiator, the 2014–2015 Australian Children's Laureate and the 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. In 2016 Jackie became a Member of the Order of Australia for her contribution to children's literature and her advocacy for youth literacy. She is regarded as one of Australia's most popular children's authors and writes across all genres — from picture books, history, fantasy, ecology and sci-fi to her much loved historical fiction for a variety of age groups. ‘A book can change a child's life. A book can change the world' was the primary philosophy behind Jackie's two-year term as Laureate. jackiefrench.com facebook.com/authorjackiefrench

Book preview

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Ride the Wild Wind

Dedication

The Golden Pony

Strangers on Horseback

Half a Million Horses

Sir Grey Nose

The Black Kid

The Baker’s Horse

Notes on the stories

The Book of Unicorns

Dedication

Warts

A Present for Aunt Addie

Amfylobbsis

Spots

The Taming of the Beast

The Lady of the Unicorn

About the Author

Books by Jackie French

Copyright

Ride the Wild Wind

Dedication

To Angela, Noël and Fabia

with love and gratitude:

the spirit of the book is yours!

The Golden Pony

Six thousand years ago …

Spring sunlight streamed across the snow and through the trees. This was a world of white and green shadows. The sled sped through the forest, avoiding the melted patches of grass tufts and broken branches.

‘Da!’ The girl signalled her father to stop.

The man pulled at the reins. The two reindeer halted as the rope tugged at their antlers, and shifted impatiently in their harness. ‘Zushan, what is it?’

The girl pointed. ‘Over there,’ she breathed. ‘Horses!’

The big man followed her gaze. Four horses stood motionless among the trees, a stallion and three mares, their heads raised nervously, waiting to run. Their coats were dappled with black like the shadows, and gold like sunlight gleamed through their coarse winter hair.

‘I’ve never seen horses that colour before,’ whispered Zushan. ‘Not as bright as that.’

The man nodded. He slipped quietly from under the furs on the sled and pulled out his spear. One step, two … the snow squeaked under his felt boots.

Suddenly the stallion broke and ran. The mares followed him, darting through the trees as the man cast the spear.

For a moment Zushan thought it would fall short. Her father was strong, but horses have tough hides. It was hard enough to drive a spear through horse skin even at close range.

One of the mares screamed. She fell to the ground, the spear through her neck, the snow turning red around it. The horse struggled frantically, trying to get to her feet.

The stallion reared. He reared once at the hunter, then galloped back and reared defiantly over the sled, as though he knew the attack had come from there. His hooves were wide and sharp. There was no time to scream or run. For a moment Zushan thought the hooves would slash down at her face, but instead the stallion turned and galloped through the trees, his mares with him.

One horse remained. A smaller horse, all legs and floppy ears and straight dark mane. The falling body of the mare must have hit it, for it struggled in the snow, trying to find its feet.

‘A foal,’ breathed Zushan. ‘An early spring foal …’ She leapt from the sled and ran after her father, her brown felt boots slushing across the snow.

The big man pulled his spear from the horse’s neck, then thrust it in again. The horse gave a dying gurgle; her struggles stopped. The foal whickered in alarm. It managed to get to its feet just as Zushan’s father lifted the spear again.

‘No!’ yelled Zushan, grabbing his arm.

Her father stopped. ‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded quickly. ‘The stallion didn’t hurt you?’

‘No, no, nothing like that. Just please don’t hurt the foal!’

Her father blinked and lowered his spear. The foal staggered a few steps then stood there shivering. ‘Why not?’ the big man asked quietly.

Zushan hesitated. Why not indeed? The foal would soon die, separated from the other horses and without its mother’s milk. Either the wolves would sniff it out, or it would starve alone in the snow.

‘Let me look after it!’ she said suddenly.

Her father stared. ‘Look after a horse! What use is a horse, except for eating?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Zushan, confused. ‘No use, I suppose. It’s just so lonely in the tent. There is no-one to cuddle up to, since Mama and Zerik died …’

The man’s gaze softened. ‘It’s been a hard winter,’ he said quietly. ‘But there will be others to cuddle up to at Auntie Meran’s tent, I promise you. How about we keep a young reindeer from the spring migration, eh? You can cuddle it all you want to and train it to pull a sleigh.’

‘I want the foal,’ whispered Zushan. ‘Its mother has died too.’

‘If we take the foal we will have to leave most of the meat,’ her father began. ‘Oh, very well, shh then …’

The foal felt warm. Its heart beat heavily against hers under the deerskin rugs. It still struggled now and then, but mostly it lay still, as though it knew the only safety now was in Zushan’s arms.

The reindeer stamped and nuzzled at the snow, looking for lichen. They took no notice as Zushan’s father pulled the skin from the horse’s body, then cut the meat from the bones into rough chunks with his stone knives. The reindeer were used to the smells of blood and hunting.

Beside the sleigh the mare’s bones and guts steamed in the snow. There was no point taking any but the best meat — rump, thigh, the long strips along the backbone, and the kidneys, heart, tongue and brain. There was a limit to what the reindeer could pull. As it was, Zushan’s father would have to run behind.

He cast a longing look at the pile of bones. Horse marrow was rich in fat and it had been a hungry winter. Perhaps he could carry some of the bones in a sling on his back. The child could do with some fat. As for the guts, well horse guts were no use, unless they were dried and used to carry melted fat or seeds, and any animal’s intestines could be used for that.

Zushan’s father felt a brief regret that it wasn’t a reindeer’s body lying in the snow, instead of a horse. If those had been reindeer guts, they could have eaten the fermented lichen in the belly. Normally humans couldn’t digest lichen, but once it had been partly digested by the reindeer, it was good to eat.

The child could do with some greens, thought her father. It would be weeks yet before the first herbs would poke up through the snow and months before the berries would ripen. Reindeer antlers could be used for tools too … Horses gave good meat bones and hide, but they weren’t much use otherwise. The big man sighed. At least there was the horse skin. A good colour it was too, all gold and black. Most horses were mouse-coloured or grey. Winter skins were warmest; Meran would be glad of it.

The foal whinnied. Zushan shushed it and stroked its golden head. Now she was close she could see faint dark stripes through the gold. Unlike the bigger horses, the foal had no shaggy winter coat. The young horse was the most beautiful animal Zushan had ever seen. ‘I’ll call you Sunlight,’ she said.

It was as warm inside Auntie Meran’s deerskin tent as Zushan’s father had promised, and filled with comforting people smells and warm breaths; especially at night, when everyone slept together on the deerskin mats under the white fox skins. It had been so cold these last months with just her and Da.

There was always someone next to you in Auntie Meran’s big round tent when you woke up in the dark.

The moisture from their breath condensed on the roof of the tent and fell back in long warm drips, plop, plop, plop, all through the night, while the reindeer snorted and stamped their hooves outside. Reindeer rarely strayed once they had been tamed.

It was good to be in a crowded tent again, thought Zushan. Auntie Meran had four children, but there was room for her; especially as Uncle Tari had gone north with Da and the other men to hunt the reindeer that poured across the land on their spring migration.

The men would spend weeks hunting and butchering, hanging the best skins out to dry high in the trees where wolves and other meat eaters couldn’t reach them.

Later, when it grew warmer, their families would travel north to join them, and other camps would meet there too. The reindeer would pull the sleds across the grasslands, avoiding the forest country where branches might block their way. Auntie Meran’s big sled, which carried the tent, furs and all her family, needed ten reindeer to pull it, with everyone taking turns to run behind and help push when the long curved wooden runners caught on bushes.

Everyone in the summer camp would spend weeks slicing the meat and drying it on wooden racks for winter, and cracking the bones and boiling them up for fat. The fat was poured into bags of reindeer guts that had been soaked in water till they were clean and soft. These bags were then tied at the top and bottom to keep the air from the fat.

The rest of summer would be spent hunting other game and gathering berries to dry for winter. The big summer camp was a time for gossip and laughter, music, marriages and stories, before the camp split up and the families returned to their winter camp sites.

Last winter had been lonely, as Mama and Zerik had died of the coughing sickness. A lone hunter had stumbled coughing into camp. Mama and Da had taken him into their tent to care for, then the sickness took them and the other families who had shared their winter camp, too. Zushan and Da had recovered, but so many from their camp had died. That was why Da had brought Zushan to Auntie Meran’s: to try to leave the memories behind.

The colt grew too fast to keep inside the tent at night, though Auntie Meran had allowed it for a few days till Zushan grew used to the strangeness. Now the young horse straggled around the camp on its long legs, eating porridge mixed with reindeer milk from Zushan’s hands, and poking his nose into other pots in case it found something good.

‘Look at the creature,’ laughed Auntie Meran, as the colt butted Zushan’s waist, hoping for more porridge, ‘it’ll be as tall as you soon!’

Auntie Meran was a round comfortable woman who laughed a lot, which was a good thing, thought Zushan. You could either laugh at the colt when it upset a bag of grain into the mud and slush, or yell at it, and laughing was definitely better.

Old Farna snorted. ‘What use is a horse, I’d like to know,’ she said. But she hobbled over and fondled the colt’s floppy ears and scratched along its back as she said it.

‘No use at all,’ stated Blani. Blani was Auntie Meran’s oldest son. He was angry because the men had said he was still too young to accompany them on the reindeer hunt this year. ‘You could never train a horse to pull a sled, or even carry a load.’

‘Why not?’ demanded Zushan

‘A horse is too stupid to train, that’s why. And they’re too small. A horse doesn’t have a reindeer’s strength.’

It was true that horses were smaller than reindeer, thought Zushan, but she refused to believe Sunlight was stupid. ‘I bet they can pull a sled,’ she insisted. ‘And they could carry small loads! See how broad his back is.’

‘It’s as skinny as yours,’ jeered Blani.

‘It will be broader when he grows up!’ said Zushan hotly.

‘And so will yours,’ said Auntie Meran soothingly. ‘You will look as fat as a pook pook bird with all its feathers ruffled by the end of this summer, you see if you don’t. Now Blani, off and check the fish traps and Zushan, check the snares we laid yesterday before the wolves get there first!’

It was as good to get away from camp sometimes as it was to be among people again, Zushan decided, as she trod through the slush under the trees, while the colt danced ahead of her then behind, nuzzling the ground for the first spring shoots.

Zushan ate as she walked too. It was habit, especially now in spring, to reach up and strip catkins from the willows, bend down to pick young thistle leaves or the unfolding stems of ferns, and use her stone knife to peel off some strips of bark, its inner layer sweet with rising sap.

Now that the snow had melted, she could see the small pools and bogs again, thick with sedge and bulrush stems. The new spring stems were crisp and sweet, and Sunlight butted her to get his share.

It was a noisy world now. Spring was in full song. The snow lingered only in deep drifts on the shady side of trees. The world was full of the cracking of ice and the yelling of the birds, and the rustles and cries of animals. Icicles dripped from the twigs, and snow melted in the branches. Streams ran down every possible channel, bringing a thousand new smells of thawed droppings and decay.

Winter smelt of ice, thought Zushan, as the colt leapt over a snowdrift, but spring smelt of the remains of last summer and of the summer to come.

The first snare was empty; the dried sinew looped around the tree lay limply on the slush. The second was empty too, but it was torn as well. Evidently a wolf or fox had found the contents before she did. Zushan untied it then tied it around another tree further on. There was no use leaving it in the same place; it had already caught something, and the smell of fear and death would scare other small animals away from it.

The colt butted her again, as though to say, ‘Come on slow foot!’ Zushan laughed, and rubbed his ears. ‘You’ve got four legs and I’ve only got two!’ she informed it. The colt whinnied back as though to say: ‘And that’s a very poor arrangement!’

‘I’ll race you then!’ said Zushan. She ran through the trees, her felt boots thudding against the grass and slush, but the colt soon overtook her, and danced circles around her as she ran.

Zushan leant puffing against a tree trunk. ‘Ooof,’ she said. ‘You have too much energy!’

The horse whinnied again, just as though he understood her. Maybe he did, thought Zushan. Blani was wrong. No reindeer ever listened to her the way that Sunlight did.

The third snare held a hare, still struggling to free its leg from the noose. Zushan wrung its neck quickly and expertly, then used her stone knife to slice between the sinew of one leg and slipped the other leg through the hole, so that the legs formed a loop and made the limp body easier to carry.

She was glad she’d found the hare. Spring was a fresh green time, with air that sometimes felt too rich to breathe, but it was a time of shortages too — winter’s stores were used up and there was little fresh food around. Even fish were hard to trap in early spring. Blani might well bring home nothing, she thought with satisfaction. Even though her hare was skinny after winter, it would feed them all.

The colt nosed at the hare, in case it was good to eat.

‘Nope,’ said Zushan, holding it high out of his reach. ‘Horses do not like hares!’ The small horse snorted with disapproval and kicked his legs high.

One more empty snare, then a fox and a weasel in the next two. Fox’s meat was sour, but the fur was good; especially in winter when it was soft and white. Weasel meat was even worse than fox — you had to be really hungry to eat weasel — but the fur was softest of all. She’d use the fur to trim a hood, decided Zushan, if Auntie Meran had no other use for it. Weasel fur felt lovely around your face and was so fine that snow and ice just slid off it.

‘Come on!’ she yelled to Sunlight, who was nosing in a snowdrift. ‘That was the last snare! Time to go home!’

The little horse ignored her.

‘Sunlight! Home!’ She walked towards him, as the colt looked up then danced towards her.

Zushan looked more closely at the snowdrift; it was white against the new spring growth and larger than any drift she’d passed. But was it a snowdrift? Surely it was too large for this late in spring, and the shape seemed wrong as well.

Zushan stepped closer. It wasn’t snow at all, she thought excitedly, it was a sheep! Perhaps it had been lying there frozen all through winter, the white of its fleece mingling with the last of the snow.

Zushan prodded it. A whole sheep was a prize, especially in spring when animals were lean after winter. This sheep would still have its autumn fat and all its wool. Wool was used to make felt. It was rolled and pounded till the cloth was thick and waterproof and more pliable than leather. Wool boots kept out the cold even better than leather, and were more comfortable too. But most wool was simply gathered from bushes as the sheep dropped it in their summer moult. This would be better than anything Blani might bring home!

If she could get it home.

Zushan hesitated. If she left the sheep and ran to get help, a wolf might find it before they got back. The snow was melting fast, and even in an hour or two there would be enough of the sheep above the snow to invite the attentions of others. But all the way back to camp was a long way to drag a frozen sheep over uneven ground. It would take both her hands. She would have to leave the fox and hare and the soft-furred weasel. If only she had brought a reindeer to help carry the load …

The colt danced in front of her, bored. Zushan gazed at it. No, the young horse couldn’t take the weight of a sheep on its back, Blani was right about that, though Sunlight would when he was an adult, she thought stubbornly. But he might … he just might …

Zushan unwound the plaited felt belt from her waist and tied part of it around the bodies of her animals.

‘Sunlight!’ she ordered, ‘Come here!’

The colt skipped towards her, expecting food. ‘No, you silly horse, stand still.’ She tied the rest of the rope around his middle in a rough harness. The horse kicked up his legs, thinking it a game. The rope slipped and the hare slithered over the young horse’s tummy. He neighed in surprise and fear, and pranced away from her.

‘No, it’s alright you silly horse,’ soothed Zushan. ‘Come back here! That’s right.’ She scratched the little animal along his back, and the place he liked best around his ears. ‘Now, you just stand still and I’ll fix this up … see? It doesn’t hurt and it’s not heavy.’

The colt kicked again, and once more the bundles tumbled. Zushan hesitated, then undid the long strips that held her leggings. The wind blew cold about her bare legs, but they would warm soon enough as she pulled the sheep. She untied the rope that held her hair back too and knotted all the ropes together.

‘Sunlight! Here boy!’ The little horse approached again. This time Zushan tied the rope in the same way her father would fix a reindeer harness — around the neck and chest, with the load attached to the harness so that it balanced on either side of Sunlight’s back.

The foal kicked up his legs and pranced around the trees, half frightened, half fascinated by the weight on his back, his head shaking backward and forward as he tried to see it. But this time the load stayed in place.

Zushan laughed. ‘It’s alright!’ she cried. ‘You’ll get used to it!’

The young horse looked at her. He seemed to be considering her, as though he were thinking: ‘Do I trust this human enough to do this or not?’ Then suddenly he halted, and trotted closer again.

Zushan looked back at the sheep. The snow was melting quickly. She took hold of the sheep’s forelegs and tugged.

Nothing happened. The sheep lay where it had lain all winter, frozen in the snow. Sunlight butted her, as if to say: ‘Can I help too?’

Zushan tugged again. She felt something give, as the sheep moved slightly. Suddenly the sheep gave way so abruptly that Zushan and the horse fell together in a mass of legs and arms.

Zushan got to her feet, laughing. The little horse whinnied, and it seemed to Zushan that perhaps he was laughing too.

‘Now, home!’ she ordered, as she began to tug the sheep across the slush and snow. The small horse bucked again and craned his head around to try to see the bundles on either side of his back. Then he noticed Zushan was ahead of him, and trotted after her.

It wasn’t easy. The way was rough; the sheep’s fleece kept catching as it began to thaw, and Zushan had to keep untangling it from twigs and bushes and lifting the body over rough bits. The strange weight on his back kept frightening the little horse too. He would trot a few steps, and then remember and grow skittish again. He had to be coaxed along.

But finally the camp was in sight, the round tents silhouetted against the pale spring sky. The reindeer were nuzzling at the ground for grass and lichen, the white of their winter coats giving way to summer brown.

‘Ahoh!’ yelled Zushan triumphantly.

The reindeer raised their heads, their antlers dark against the sky. Aunt Meran looked up from the fire where she had been cooking a fish — one very small fish, thought Zushan happily. Blani looked up too, and old Farna and all the others.

‘It’s a sheep!’ yelled Zushan. ‘A whole sheep! And Sunlight has more things too!’ She laughed as the little horse trotted beside her, carrying his load as steadily and obediently as any reindeer.

It was a good summer after that.

The colt grew taller and broader. He carried small loads regularly now, not heavy ones — perhaps just a skin scraped clean of fat and membrane, ready for tanning — and trotted after Zushan from one end of the camp to the other. But there would be time enough for Sunlight to carry proper loads, thought Zushan proudly, when the horse reached his full sturdy growth.

‘I would never have believed it,’ said Auntie Meran in wonder, watching the little horse trot obediently after Zushan as she carried firewood back from the trees. Blani said nothing but he gave Zushan the best helping of fish whenever he caught one, as though in apology. Blani wasn’t so bad, thought Zushan cheerfully, once he got over his disappointment at being left out of the hunt.

‘You should tether that horse,’ advised old Farna, ‘or put him in the yard at night like the new reindeer, or he will wander off.’

Zushan shook her head. ‘But he likes it here!’ she said. ‘We’re friends. We’re his family.’

Old Farna shook her head. ‘Friends you may be,’ she said, ‘but one day he’ll wander off.’

Zushan smiled. Sometimes she dreamed that one day Sunlight would pull a sled, just like a reindeer, or even carry her on his back once he was fully grown. But she never mentioned that in case everyone laughed. But one day, she said to Sunlight in her mind, one day we’ll show them all …

Yes, it was a good summer. The camp moved northwards to join the hunters, as did the other camps of the region, and the young horse came too, trotting behind the sleds with the spare reindeer. Unlike them he carried no packs of furs or dried meat; Auntie Meran judged he was still too young to carry anything far.

It was wonderful to see Da again; to be with so many people and enjoy laughter and roast thick reindeer steaks every day and sit around fires that sparked into the night. The rivers ran thick with fish and foam, and berries ripened on their low bushes away from the trees.

Berry-picking was best of all, thought Zushan. You could eat as you picked, as long as you were careful to watch out for the bears who loved the berries too. More than once the young